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A hollow victory and little political capital could vex consensus-building
When he first began to muse about a run for the White House, George W. Bush knew one thing for certain. He wanted to reduce destructive political warfare in a Washington that seemed to have lost its senses. The formative influences on the
Texan's thinking aren't hard to divine. He was seared by the partisan firestorm President Reagan and Bush Senior encountered over the aborted appointments of Robert H. Bork to the Supreme Court and Texas Senator John Tower to the Defense Dept. Bush was equally repulsed by
Republicans' reaction: the harsh, in-your-face leadership style displayed by former House Speaker Newt Grinrich in the wake of the
GOP's 1994 takeover of the House of
Representatives.
But little did Bush know that consensus-building would become the central focus of his Presidency—or that his very election was to be a catalyst for national division. After five agonizing weeks of legal wrangling over
Florida's electoral votes, a Dec. 12 decision by the U. S. Supreme Court ended the standoff with Democrat Al Gore and Vaulted Bush to the Presidency. But the verdict of a deeply divided court, which endorsed the awarding of
Florida's electoral votes to Bush without a full recount of contested ballots, was a bitter conclusion to as polarizing campaign, one that brought the nation to the brink of a Constitutional crisis. On Dec. 13, Gore made it official in a gracious concession speech.
Accepting Gore's concession, Bush promised to pursue a policy of
"reconciliation and unity." Now the emotionally spent and politically wounded GOP
"victor" must prepare to govern a riven nation. "The circumstances of this victory are
unique," sighs an exhausted Bush political advisor. "All we know now is that
we'll have to govern differently that we planed."
By any measure, Bush faces a monumental task: healing a country that is at loggerheads over the role of government, whose citizens are alternately furious or triumphant over the bizarre conclusion to the election, whose political institutions and legal system emerged from the five-week election ordeal arguably in worse shape than they began it. Both Bush and Gore seemed to shrink from the stature as they duled for public opinion and permitted finagling lawyers to bend at will such core principles as
states' rights and equal protection. And nearly every official who went near the election swamp—from
Florida's county canvassing boards all the way up to the nine robed justices of the Supreme court—came away sullied.
(Business Week)
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